NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/comp/sys/hp/12836

Text File | 1992-11-12 | 12.5 KB | 252 lines

Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Path: sparky!uunet!caen!sdd.hp.com!apollo.hp.com!netnews
From: [e-mail] (#David McSavaney)
Subject: Re: New HP Workstations
Sender: [e-mail] (Usenet News)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 16:05:12 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Nntp-Posting-Host: macsav.ch.apollo.hp.com
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 239

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Meinhard E. Mayer (Hardy)) writes:
>Would anyone who has the information care to post details on the new
>workstations announced by HP (and Sun and DEC) today?
>--
>Hardy
>-----
>Meinhard E. Mayer,  Department of Physics, UC Irvine
>e-mail: [e-mail] (preferred) or [e-mail]
>!!!! NO NEXTMAIL TO THESE ADDRESSES, PLEASE !!!!!

With pleasure.
I noticed our collegues at Digital were proactive on this newgroup.
The most comprehensive machine versus machine comparison that I
know about exists in the latest edition of the HP Performance Brief
which was issued on November 10. Your local sales/support person
should be able to copy the last page for you. That brief will be
updated in the New Year when we incorporate the SPEC submittals
from Digital and Sun which were sent to SPEC on November 10.


Here are outline details of the new Empowered Computing Program
released for HP's Workstation products yesterday. These are extracted
from press releases, you should ask you local HP contact for
data sheets and pricing. I apologise that I was unable to remove
all the marketing blurb, but many points about the program
are expressed more clearly in the text than are represented by
pure numbers.

Overall, I think you should be aware of exactly what was announced
yesterday and why. Three things were announced:

1) An integrated workgroup multimedia environment based on HP VUE
   that makes professional workers more productive and workstations
   more usable and useful. MPower provides flexibility in day-to-day
   communications by integrating technologies such as video, data, fax,
   email and voice into a single point-and-use system.
   We did this to make our UNIX workstations the most effective part of
   a business communications network. We did it because PC's are not
   the best engines to use because of the lack of integration of networking,
   graphics and CPU and because we had fun doing it. MPower is inexpensive.

2) No longer does HP provide very high-performance 3D graphics *only* on
   top-end workstations. We have made available our high-end graphics options
   for all desktop models - regardless of base entry price. We also introduced
   a faster replacement for the TVRX system, the CRX-48Z, that is available
   on all new systems apart from one.
   We did this because we are convinced that fast 3D and "sketchbook" modelling
   will be growing elements that drive interative desktop graphics.
   We also had fun proving we could build faster systems than Silicon Graphics.

3) We announced the most powerful desktop computer or workstation in the
   world - again. We announced a new desktop family of 700's based on PA7100.
   The 730 has not been beaten since it was introduced in March 91, so we
   did it again; because we can and because we had fun proving that the PA7100 is
   the most scalable and sustainable RISC architecture around, unlike SPARC.

Dave McSavaney
Workstation Systems Group, Product Marketing
Hewlett-Packard Corporation

HP MPOWER ENABLES MULTIMEDIA WORKSTATION-BASED COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION
    HP MPower enhances communication and collaboration by giving users
point-and-click access to multimedia types, audio, image and video and
several ways to share information.  Multimedia electronic mail, faxing,
printing, image scanning and the ability to share and edit applications and
images across the network are HP MPower capabilities.

    Real-time sharing of text, graphics, image, audio, video frames and
third-party applications among workstations is already possible with HP SharedX.
HP SharedX is the component of HP MPower that allows a user to pick a
destination, press a key and share any X window on the display with any user
or users on the network.

    HP's SharedWhiteBoard, another component of HP MPower, allows any
shared image to be annotated on the computer display as if it were on a
whiteboard in a conference room.  When used in conjunction with a telephone,
these HP technologies make it easy and practical to incorporate critical visual
information into real-time teleconferencing.

    The workstation's audio and image capabilities are extended with
HP MPower to include an audio editor and image viewer.  The CD-quality audio
editor enables the annotation, playback, recording, copying and editing of audio
files; the image viewer allows users to incorporate images into applications
and to view and manipulate images.

HP Multimedia Mailer  enhances standard UNIX system-based mail to
allow the inclusion of audio, image and video frames in a logical sequence
throughout an electronic-mail message.  Invoking the mailer requires only the
selection and movement of a file to the mailer icon    on the media panel.

HP 9000 FAX-UX  permits the user to send and receive faxes directly from
the desktop to any workstation, PC or X station equipped with fax on the
network.

DeskScan/UX support allows users to scan, view, manipulate for scale,
contrast and brightness, and store and print high-resolution color and
monochrome images.

PostScriptRViewer  enables viewing of Postscript-based objects on the
display.

SharedPrint/UX  is a drag-and-drop printing service that allows users to
print color, text, graphics and images to local or remote printers across the
network.

VideoLive card software support enables real-time video playback in a
window on the workstation screen and the ability to capture video frames for
use in documentation or electronic-mail messages.  Only the software support
for video is provided with HP MPower.  The VideoLive card for HP
workstations is available separately.

    The HP MPower client includes a stereo headset designed by Plantronics,
Inc., a leader in headset technology, for use specifically with workstations.
The headset integrates a microphone for  private and hands-free audio
interaction.

    To meet the communication needs of every member of an enterprise
network, HP MPower is designed and priced as a client/server solution.
HP expects that typically one server will support 10 clients.
HP MPower takes advantage of the features inherent in HP VUE.  All
functions in HP MPower are enabled through the manipulation of icons.  A
context-sensitive help manager incorporates hyperlinked text that allows  users
to explore any topic in detail.
Like HP VUE, HP MPower is preconfigured and accessible as soon as the
workstation is turned on.

            HP'S NEW 3-D GRAPHICS PRODUCTS

    With 48 color planes and true-color double buffering, the Series 700
CRX-48Z workstation is a 3-D solids modeling system without peer in its price
class.     HP's  new CRX-48Z configured workstations deliver the following:

    -up to 600,000 triangles/s for fast 3-D solids rendering -- more
than twice as fast as the equivalently priced Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI)
Elan workstations;

    -twice the wireframe performance and 35 percent higher triangle
performance of comparably configured Freedom Series from Sun Microsystems
and Evans &    Sutherland for $15,000 less;

    -GPC cylinder-head performance of 78.7, the highest published
3-D solids performance in the industry at any price; and

    -X11 performance up to three times faster than any competitive
3-D workstation.  Window manipulation is instantaneous.

    Head-to-head with the SGI Indigo R4000 Elan, HP's Model 715/50 CRX-48Z
workstation gives users a nearly 70 percent X Window performance boost and more
than two times the 3-D triangle performance for much less money.

    CRX-24Z-based workstations offer a 24-bit Z buffer for fast polygon
performance and draw up to a fast 140,000 triangles/s.  The Model 715/33
CRX-24Z delivers 1.5 times greater 3-D vector performance, 25 percent greater
3-D triangle performance and 65 percent more quadrilateral performance than the
SGI Indigo XS24Z. 715/33 CRX-24Z is priced less than the SGI workstation.

We have measured two- to four-times higher overall graphics
performance on our new graphics workstations than the equivalently priced and
configured SGI R4000 workstation running Pro/Engineer from Parametric
Technology, a leading mechanical-design application.

    HP PowerShade Version 2 creates a 3-D image in workstation memory.  It
then uses the X Window System protocol to send the image over the network
to the X-capable device, such as a member of the HP 700/RX station product
line - allowing low-cost displays to be used as 3D terminals.

    The company's multimonitor workstation configurations allow Series 700
users to take advantage of expanded screen real estate for applications such as
GIS, command and control, financial-transaction processing and process control
by allowing multiple screens to be actively controlled from a single keyboard.

Lastly, the new engines:

The World's Fastest Workstation
        The 99-MHz Models 735 and 755 are the fastest workstations in
the industry, delivering 150.6 SPECfp92, 80 SPECint92 and 147 SPECmark89 to
tackle the complex applications that solve everyday problems for workstation
users.  The workstations provide nearly twice the system performance of HP's
current industry leaders, while maintaining full binary compatibility with
existing models.  All of the new Series 700 workstation performance ratings
were achieved using HP's standard HP-UX compilers.

        The Model 735 provides at least twice the floating-point
performance and 35 percent greater integer performance than any competitive
desktop system from Sun Microsystems, IBM or Silicon Graphics today.

        The Series 700 workstations offer more than three times the X11
graphics performance of any workstation competitor, delivering 19,122 X11perf.
They support a broad range of HP graphics systems, including the new CRX-48Z,
the fastest mechanical-design graphics system in its price range.

These new workstations feature the fast and wide SCSI 2 mass-storage interface,
which eliminates I/O bottlenecks by delivering disk throughput of up to
20 Mbytes/s for major gains in real application performance.  In addition,
a high-speed integrated on-board FDDI connection is now available on 735/755.

The Model 735 is the ideal building block for the cluster computing
solution recently introduced by HP and Convex Computer Corp.   For example, a
rack of eight Model 735 workstations running Convex cluster software delivers
more than 1,500 peak Mflops and nearly 1 billion instructions per second
providing supercomputer performance at a small fraction of the cost.

        Easy, no-penalty CPU board upgrades are available from current
Model 720, 730 and 750 workstations to Models 735 and 755.  No-penalty means
that the combined cost of the current model and the upgrade is equivalent to
the cost of a new system from the factory, providing both current and future
customers with an industry-leading upgrade path.

The 715 and 725 family supports probably more internal RAM than you will ever
need and up to 2 Gbytes of internal disk storage.  EISA expandability is
provided in this low-priced package, four slots in the Model 725 and one
in the Model 715. CD quality 16 bit audio is also provided.

        HP computer systems now come standard with a new limited
one-year on-site warranty and choice of support options.  Support options
upgrade the base hardware warranty to higher repair responsiveness and provide
software updates and software telephone support.

Benchmark figures

               715    715/     735/
                      725      755
             (33MHz) (50MHz) (99MHz)
SpecMark89       46      69     147
MFLOPS            8      13      41
SpecInt92        24      37      80
SpecFP92         45      72     151
SPECint89        27      40      88
SPECfp89         66      99     206
MIPS             41      62     124
X11Perf        7424   10646   18790

Enjoy.

Dave McSavaney

Not an official statement of Hewlett-Packard Company
==============================================================================